Who’s the earliest person we know of? Not a religious or literary character, but an actual person whose name and/or life we can confirm?
The earliest hieroglyphs and cuneiforms don’t correspond to modern letters and sounds in a verifiable way. I’ve heard (but cannot cite) that the oldest writing sample is Babylonian cuneiforms of a cattle accounting ledger, so I’m gonna go with the owner of those cattle.
Egypt’s earliest king was represented with a scorpion hieroglyph. While I’m pretty sure he didn’t have adventures like the Rock’s Scorpion King, Egypt’s King Scorpion is at least a contender.
And for the one whose actual name we know, I’ll go out on a limb here and guess Hammurrabi.
Great minds think alike. There’s some good stuff in that thread.
Wonder if we’ll come up with more this time around…
How about that Iron-Age man they found frozen in a glacier? They don’t know his name but they know his “story,” through forensics.
Don’t you know?
Sorry, Eve, but like lots of other real people, Osti was “undocumented.”
If anyone, I would think that Eve should know the answer to this. 
Didn’t Al Gore claim this honor?
No he invented the internet.
How about Gilgamesh?
I think Gilgamesh is considered fiction. I suppose it might be based on fact, of course greatly exaggerated though.
I believe it was Menes, aka Meni, the first known pharaoh of the united kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, ca. 3000 BC. Though an earlier documented Sumerian would certainly be possible.
Hey, how old do you think I am?
It depends, obviously on what we accept as being documentation.
The pharoah who united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt was called Narmer. A relief picture of him on a ceremonial shield has been cited as the oldest known portrait of a person who can be identified by name.
As for Al Gore, this really is getting tired. Check Snopes or any of a thousand other sources. He did *not * say he invented The Internet. Neither did he say he discovered Love Canal–Sarah Vowell, who was there when he supposedly made the statement, did a fascinating report on the NPR program This American Life in which she included the passage in which he supposedly said it. He said nothing even remotely similar; a reporter for The New York Times simply took some words out of a sentence, and strung them together with some other stuff he either made up, or which the voices in his head told him. Gore also did not say that he was the model for Oliver in Love Story. He said an article in a newspaper said it. And it did. And later author Erich Segal said it was true.
Well, to exhume yet again a hoary old SDMB joke, Eve, I can remember when you, Satan, and Adam (ARG220) were having a Great Debate about sin!
To give a serious answer, Menes, the first Pharaoh of a united Egypt, fl. c. 3100 BC; Narmer, with dates at about the same and perhaps the same person as Menes, who left a ceremonial stele at Hierakonpolis; and “King Scorpion” (who shares only a name with the Rock’s character), who slightly preceded them – whose actual name is not known, but who used the scorpion as his symbol, are the three candidates, depending on the variety of proof you want. Menes is not attested to by contemporary inscriptions but is considered recent history by material only slightly later than him, so IMHO that counts as historical. Depending on whether you regard the scorpion cartouche as representing a name, King S. or Narmer is the first contemporarily recorded Egyptian king.
Sumer dates back to slightly before this, but the first recorded kings with both names and dates known are a century or two later.
Of the other possible candidates, China is legendary until about 2000 B.C. (the Hsia, first “historical” dynasty, dates from 1994 BC). And nobody can read any of the Indus Valley inscriptions, which postdate Egypt and Sumer by a century or two anyway.
[parody]However, he did introduce pants to Scotland in 1808, gave the first public demonstration of the flugelhorn in 1871, was the only man ever to pinch-run for Ty Cobb, and beat Orson Wells in the Great Hot Dog Eat-Off at Pink’s Hot Dog Stand in 1967.[/parody]
Enmebaragisi founded the first dynasty of Kish, in northern Mesopotamia, around 2700 BC. He is known from concurrent and subsequent references and is believed to be a single historic person.
He is reputed to be a contemporary of Gilgamesh, who’s historicity is less well accepted. (Some even believe he was a she, and a goddess of an earlier mythos.)
Tris
During this same rough period (6500 to 2600 BCE) the Harappan culture in the Indus valley developed a system of seals carved in stone bearing both pictures and script. We have no method for interpreting these seals, nor any example of how the images they would produce were used. There is some likelihood that some of these were used to represent people.
Our own inability to decipher the symbols renders it impossible to know who was the earliest person represented in the Harappan culture’s symbols, but that person might well be earlier than the Sumerian, or Egyptian kings.
Does that count as documented?
Tris
Slipster. Yeah, you’re right, the name was Narmer. I couldn’t remember, so I looked in a couple really old history books lying around the house. Medes may have been the dynasty names; it’s unclear. And Triskadecamus, I think the Harrapan culture started later, say 2000-1800 BC. But was more impressive than either the Egyptian or Sumerian in certain ways. You could take the skulls found in Jericho, ca. 9000 BC, adorned with plaster to represent the face and shells for the eyes, as a form of documentation.
semi-hijack
Al Gore’s quote:
Source is SNOPES, but they claim the quote was “misinterpreted.”
Interpret what you will, and I have a .wav available on emailed request.